Day 4: Job 1-5

Welcome to 5 -Minute Bible, your daily guide for your daily reading. Today is

January 4th and we'll be reading Job 1 -5. Now today's reading moves us out of the

Genesis narrative and into the world of Job, a man who lived likely during the patriarchal era around the time of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

And that's why Job appears here in the chronological reading plan because the chronological

Bible prioritizes when things happened, not when or not where they occur in your

English Bible. The setting of this book actually belongs earlier than when we see it in our

Table of Contents. It happens before Israel, before the Mosaic Law, and even before the priesthood.

Job shows us what faith and righteousness and suffering looked like in the ancient world – when

God's people lived almost entirely by the promise of God, rather than by clear explanation.

Now Job opens up by introducing us to a theological conundrum, and it asks us to evaluate the truthfulness of three very important truth claims.

But only two of them are actually true. The three truth claims are this, 1. Job is a righteous man.

2. God is just and holy. 3. Good people end up blessed and wicked people end up cursed.

And we will see over the next several days, and maybe weeks even, how each of the characters of this book have varying views on which of those truth claims are true.

Job argues that he is a righteous man and that when people are good, they ought to be blessed. So Job's fundamental assertion in the book is that God's not being fair, or that God is not being just.

Job's friends take a different approach, however. They argue that God is always just and wicked people are always cursed.

So the fact that Job is undergoing suffering and cursing means that he must be a wicked man.

But as we will see in the end of the book, God shows up and says to both of them, you don't actually understand the world and how

I run it. God admits that Job is righteous. God also affirms that he is true and good and holy.

But he also challenges everyone in the narrative to expand their view of the world and of reciprocity because good people don't always get blessings and wicked people in this life don't always suffer.

And what God is inviting everyone in the narrative to reckon with is their own limited ability to know why things happen at all.

As Job would later say, there are many things in this life that happen that we don't understand, human suffering included, that they're far too wonderful for us to even speak about with words because our limited knowledge is so finite.

So keep your eye on this theme as we continue in the book of Job. It will happen over and over again.

And as far as our chapters today go, they begin with the book pulling back the veil between the material and the immaterial world, revealing a heavenly courtroom where Satan comes and challenges

Job's integrity right there in front of the Almighty, accusing Job of even serving

God only because he was going to get some kind of blessing. And it's at this point that God permits

Job to be tested all the way to the point of his life being taken. He loses his wealth, his children, and his health.

And yet, though devastated, Job does not curse God. His friends arrive very quickly, but because of their misunderstanding about the world and how things work, they don't encourage him.

They actually shift immediately into accusation, insisting that his suffering must be the result of his own sin.

Their speeches dominate these early chapters, and they frame the struggle that's going to define the book and how we understand suffering.

So as you read today, ask yourself the question, what happens when a righteous person suffers without any good human reason behind it?

Job confronts us with a category that many believers are going to struggle to accept that obedience doesn't always guarantee prosperity, and righteousness doesn't always shield a person from all kinds of pain and loss.

Faith in this world is often refined by endurance through the darkest night and doesn't always reward us with noonday blessings.

It's at this point that the book unmistakably points us to Jesus Christ. Job is a righteous man who suffers unjustly, yet Job is not sinless, and his righteousness cannot save him or explain his pain.

Job longs for a mediator, someone who can stand between him and God, someone who can plead his case and restore his fellowship with Yahweh.

That longing that Job has, that you and I have in our suffering, finds its fulfillment in the

Lord. Because it's Jesus who was the one who was the truly righteous sufferer, innocent not merely in his reputation but in reality.

Unlike Job, Jesus knew exactly why he was suffering, and unlike Job, he entered into that suffering willingly for the joy set before him.

Where Job cries out for an advocate, Jesus is the advocate. Where Job's righteousness cannot end his suffering,

Jesus' righteousness becomes the means of salvation by which all suffering will eventually be put down and underneath his feet.

Job shows us that wisdom itself can't solve the problem of pain and suffering and trials and afflictions, and that our morality cannot actually help us escape from our suffering.

Only a Redeemer can do that, and that Redeemer has come in the Lord Jesus Christ. As you read

Job 1 -5 today, listen carefully to the voices who are offering confident explanations for pain.

Notice how easy answers fail to actually comfort and even address the truth, and how unanswered suffering presses faith deeper and develops it.

Job's questions are going to intensify before they're resolved, and when God finally speaks, it will not be in the way anyone in the narrative expects.

And it's my prayer that as you read this book, that it will help you understand your suffering as well.

And with that, I want you to read your Bible carefully, devotionally, and joyfully, and may the

Lord use His Word to purify you completely, and we will continue our journey tomorrow.